From Lucha
Organ of the Communist Party of Labor
June 1995

A Lesson of Firmness and Courage

Rafael Chaljub Mejia

On the occasion of the commemoration of the 15th Anniversary pf the founding of our Communist Party of Labor, it will be very useful and and opportune to recall the display of firmness and courage which was necessary in those initial moments of the existence and development of our organization.

Our party was scarcely a nucleus of cadres when it had to wage a long and tiring struggle, characterized by the intensity of confrontation with every type of enemy and by the merciless persecution under which it was necessary to act.

A struggle to conquer precarious spaces for open action. Unequal combat in the terrain of armed struggle. Active participation in the great struggles. Acting in great political confrontations; all in the middle of a long clandestinity and of a bloody siege which sent to jail or into exile the majority of cadres of the old party and assassination deprived it of its most brilliant leaders.

without allowing itself to be conquered by the weariness which such a long confrontation could provoke, nor making concessions to the opportunist positions either from outside or within the old organization, the communists formed in the Dominican Popular Movement, thoroughly convinced of the necessity to form a new party, took up and fulfilled the promise of founding the Communist Party of Labor, based on new conceptions, which signified a structure and a differentiation from the groups and practices which prevailed in the country.

When it arose formally on June 29, 1980, The Communist Party of Labor was born in the most difficult circumstances. Imperialism and its local allies changed tactics in their struggle against the revolutionary forces of our country; they substituted the method of physical extermination, profusely used during the 12 years of the Balaguer dictatorship, for that of bribery and the incorporation of cadres and leftist activists into the mechanics of the system.

In the international field, both Soviet revisionism and the supporters of the Chinese theory of the three worlds, displayed an intense activity. At the same time numerous currents were propagated which, in the name of the supposed necessity of the renovation of the left, opposed the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism.

All these international theories and currents had their followers and supporters in our country. They believed that they were lords and masters of the left-wing movement, and once they saw the disposition of the PCT to act as an autonomous party with its own positions, they put into action that battery of attacks against it, placing the new party between two fires, that which reaction naturally shot against us and that which came from the opportunist groups.

The Communist Party of Labor could have assumed a temporized attitude, in the name of gaining time by affirming itself at least as a political force that was born ; it could have temporized with the government and at the same time sought a peace without principles in exchange for which the hostile groups would recognize its right to existence.

But the PCT did not arise as one more of the groups which saturated the left-wing movement in our country, but as a revolutionary negation of these. Therefore it was always fully conscious of its mission and of the reactions that woke it.

There should be no doubt that beginning with the right to exist and to act, every space, every advance that was won was achieved at the cost of struggle, and was never a free gift from anyone.

It persisted in the defense of its conceptions of the revolutionary party of a new type. In its defense and application of the Leninist-Stalinist norms, the guides of its internal life; it delineated the camps between the hostile currents and groups and assumed its own particular features and outlines.

Conscious of the fact that the process of its own construction and its formation into a combative vanguard is only possible by carrying out work appropriate to its construction with its action in the struggle of the masses and the political combats, the PCT from the very instant of its formation launched itself into the tormentuous sea of the class struggle, began to affirm its roots in the mass movements, to test its combativity and its creative capacity; at the same time to take active part in national events and to leave the marks of its positions and initiatives regarding these.

The PCT never acted nor does it now as a sectarian organization, lover of discussion and polemics for the mere reason to polemicize and discuss. But it understood the importance of confronting and unmasking the erroneous tendencies in the heart of the movement, the importance of living with its guard on high and with its powder dry. of of maintaining itself always [al pie de canyon], and with a disposition to defend with tooth and nail its principles, the interests of the class it represents.

And thus began our advance. Slow but sustained, inch by inch, blow by blow and, fifteen years afterward, while there were many groups who were hostile to us that no longer exist, while others abandoned their positions and turned renegade, and others, by means of their frustration and impotence believe that they are remedying their bitterness reiterating their treasonous attacks against us; meanwhile, here is the Communist Party of Labor, with concrete results which offer a long and promising life ahead.

Here is the Communist Party of Labor on foot, with its foundations and its political culture tempered in the three lamps of life, and upon which we can continue our unstoppable advance.

The repression has not turned us, which has tinged the Dominican soil with the blood of our comrades, nor has bribery softened us, nor will the pressure ever turn us, especially after the fall of the countries of East Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

We have not changed nor will we change our positions of principle, on the basis of which our Party arose, and it has maintained the monolithic unity of its ranks, against which have smashed themselves and will continue turning to dust all the predictions and attacks of our enemies.

The lesson of firmness and courage, of tenacity and valor, which our party gave at the time of its foundation, remain fresh as a school of communist education, are cultivated as part of the good communist traditions of the PCT and on the basis of which it will continue educating the advancement of the future.

Those comrades who during the whole fifteen years have known how to remain faithful at the posts of struggle to which the Communist Party of Labor has assigned them, although the passage of time has gone on burdening them with wrinkles and gray hairs, changing their physical appearance; at the bottom of its conceptions it maintains itself unchanged, therefore it continues as young and fresh as it was fifteen years ago; while new comrades enter the party, combining their vitality and dynamism with the experience of the first ones and, if if slow differences [?] between the old guard and the young guard, the PCT continues and will continue moving forward with the force of each and every one of its men and women.

Without any doubt, new tests await us on the road towards the conquest of the revolutionary objectives of the Party. Efforts, tiring combats, persecutions, jails and harsh sacrifices, including the possibility even of death; all of which should be faced with the same firmness and the same revolutionary courage characteristic of the PCT in the whole path of its life and, without any doubt that despite all obstacles, our correct and firm Communist Party of Labor will have new anniversaries, with a balance of victories each time greater.

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